Cursa dels Nassos – Sant Silvestre de Barcelona

The San Silvestre is a chip-timed 10K that takes place in the main streets of Barcelona on New Year's Eve at 5.30p.m. It starts just as it's about to get dark.

The race is also known as the Cursa dels Nassos which is Catalan meaning the Race of Noses. One web page says that the name comes from the fact that the date coincides with the last day in the life of the Man of Many Noses, a popular character in Catalan folklore.

It was a hard race to run as it was very crowded: space was difficult to find and it was difficult to achieve a constant running pace. I and a few others spent a lot of time being naughty by running along the pavements and even behind spectators in places. This was more hard work because the pavements were sometimes uneven and there are many roads to cross, but I could concentrate on running rather than space-finding. In some ways, this aspect of the race reminded me of the Great North Run. Throughout the race, people were overtaking me at a much greater pace and I was in turn overtaking those who were gently ambling along. This was happening throughout the race, even within the last couple of Ks. They have lots of video of the race divided up into one minute segments. Anyway, you can easily see how crowded the race was by looking at one of these videos.